


Bargaining Chips

by icewhisper



Series: Leonard Snart Shorts [9]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Lewis Snart's A+ Parenting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 19:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11996382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: He was used to his father holding Lisa over his head, but not Mick. Mick was never supposed to play into anything with Lewis. They’d had rules, strict rules that kept his partner far away from the man, because Mick had always gotten that dangerous look in his eyes whenever he saw the bruises and Len knew he was thinking about fires and abusive fathers.





	Bargaining Chips

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of my writing blog, [leonardsnartwrites](https://leonardsnartwrites.tumblr.com/). Normally, it would have been posted under the collections fic, [Leonard Snart Shorts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10837056), but it ended up longer than planned.
> 
> Anonymous prompt: Could you write something where Mick and Lisa get captured and used to extort Len? I love your writing!

He was used to his father holding Lisa over his head, but not Mick. Mick was never supposed to play into anything with Lewis. They’d had _rules_ , strict rules that kept his partner far away from the man, because Mick had always gotten that dangerous look in his eyes whenever he saw the bruises and Len knew he was thinking about fires and abusive fathers.

If it wouldn’t have ruined Mick’s life, he probably would have let him do it—had honestly considered it when Lisa was seven and he wasn’t fast enough to stop the broken beer bottle from cutting into her shoulder.

Some part of him had wanted to kill Lewis himself, but he wasn’t strong enough. He was a thief and he was the first one to admit he could be a cold-hearted bastard if the situation called for it, but Lewis made him freeze up. He couldn’t do it. He wanted to, but he couldn’t do it.

Lewis never gave him a choice.

Mick had driven Lisa to her skating class for him, bitching the entire time about the cold, but Len knew he’d chosen to hang around and watch it. One last show and she wouldn’t be able to keep up with it anymore, pushed away by their father and an injured knee that never quite healed right. She’d been landing her jumps with grimaces instead of smiles for a while.

They weren’t there when he finally made it to the rink, pockets stuffed with wallets that weren’t his, but that held enough to keep the lights on for another month. Mick’s truck—beaten up thing that it was—was still in the parking lot, but the rink was empty. His stomach churned while he checked the locker rooms. No Lisa. No Mick.

“Leo?”

He spun on his heel and faced Lisa’s coach. “I’m just trying to find Lisa,” he told her before the woman could start in with the pleasantries and shooting disapproving looks at the bruises purpling the right side of his jaw.

“Your father picked her up,” she said and Len froze. “He drove your friend home, too. His truck wouldn’t start.”

Len’s heart hit the floor.

 

 

Lewis was at the house when he made it back, chest heaving from the run. It was too far and too cold, but he didn’t care. Couldn’t care. It was bad enough that he couldn’t protect Lisa from Lewis, but he’d spent years keeping his connection to Mick under wraps. Lewis hadn’t known he had a friend, let alone a partner. He determinedly didn’t think that Mick might have been a little more if stolen kisses meant anything. It wasn’t important then. To Lewis, Len breaking off with someone else for jobs was probably more dangerous territory than him being queer.

“’Bout time,” Lewis huffed at him, but there was a cocky grin that made Len’s hands shake. “You’re late.”

The threats came out in tandem as he pushed plans for a job towards Len. It was stupid. Lewis worked for the Santini family with small-time jobs, but they’d always kept him away from the Darbiniyans. Family work stayed within the Family and Lewis wanted to steal from the Darbiniyans.

“You’re going to start a mob war,” he told his father, horrified.

“Not me,” Lewis corrected and Len gave up his fake show of strength to drop onto a rickety kitchen chair.

He wanted to say he couldn’t, that nobody could get in and get out with the merchandise without getting caught. The security was too good and what they didn’t have in cameras, they had in men with guns. It didn’t matter how skilled a thief he was, some places just couldn’t be broken into, and stealing the ledger from Alex Darbiniyan was a suicide mission.

But he had Lisa.

He had Mick.

He watched Lewis flick Mick’s lighter—the one he’d given Mick for his last birthday—open and shut, taunting him. He didn’t want to think about the shape Mick was in if Lewis had managed to get that away from him.

“I do this,” he started and wished his voice didn’t sound as fragile as it is, “you let me take Lisa and go. No kidnapping charges. You sign over guardianship and leave her alone.” Her. Not him. He’d accepted a long time ago that he’d never get out from under Lewis’ thumb, but he could try and save her.

Lewis snorted, but he stopped playing with the lighter and grasped it in a beefy hand instead. “Fine. You manage this, you might even get your firebug back.” He turned a cruel look towards Len. “Thought you’d be more scared of him after he offed his family.”

Mick hadn’t. The fire had been because of an electrical short. He didn’t bother correcting Lewis.

He got to work.

 

 

Giving the ledger to the Santinis would be a smart idea if it didn’t get Lewis killed. They’d either be impressed by the skill Lewis would no doubt take credit for and officially take him into the fold or they’d see it as the spark to start a war between the Families and put a bullet in his skull. Lewis expected the former. Len would have hoped for the latter if retribution wouldn’t have spread to him and Lisa both.

It took him two weeks to plan, two weeks of sleepless nights and worrying about Mick and Lisa, but he had it. The plan was choppy and he’d get himself killed if he made one wrong step, but he might be able to do it. Thirty-seven minutes and twenty-two seconds. That was all the time he had to get in and out with the ledger.

He hoped Lewis’ intel about where Alex Darbiniyan kept it was right. Prayed to a god he hadn’t believed in since they put his mother in the ground and Lewis told him he wasn’t allowed to breathe a word of Hebrew again.

“I want to talk to them,” he told Lewis the night before the heist. “I’m not going in unless I know they’re both still alive.”

“I’ll kill them if you don’t,” Lewis countered, but they both knew he couldn’t. He would kill them both in a heartbeat, but not without losing the power he had over Len.

“I want my phone call,” he told him, a hint of sarcasm that was definitely mocking the career his father had lost. It earned him another bruise and blood dripping into his eye, but he got to talk to them. The connection was poor, Lisa was crying, and Mick sounded murderous, but they were alive.

“I wanna come home, Lenny,” Lisa sobbed, far past the point of trying to be brave.

“Len,” Mick grumbled, but Len could hear the nervousness and the questions he wasn’t asking.

“Keep an eye on Lisa,” he told him instead of pushing promises that it would be okay. He held the phone tighter, plastic groaning under his grip, and glanced back towards Lewis. “Okay?”

“Yeah, Boss. We’ll be here.”

 

 

He did it. He got a bullet in the thigh for his trouble, but it wasn’t his head and he still managed to get out with the ledger weighing down his backpack. No one saw his face, covered as it was by the ski mask that made it hard to breathe. Still, he took the long way back to the rendezvous point, knuckles white from how hard he held onto the steering wheel and eyes straying back to the speedometer every few seconds once he’d made it back into the main part of the city.

The driver’s seat wasn’t salvageable by the time he reached Lewis, too soaked through with blood, but he limped his way out and to his father for the exchange. Pretended his anxiety didn’t hike up when Lewis deviated from the plan and torched the car before he’d tell Len where Lisa and Mick were.

He wondered if he’d hoped Len would die of blood loss first.

“You got what you wanted,” he told him and gestured a shaking hand towards the ledger he’d traded for the guardianship papers and the lighter. “Where are they?”

They were a mile down the road, huddled together until they saw him limping down. Lisa threw herself off Mick’s lap with a cry of his name, but Mick calling her was the only thing that stopped her from launching herself at her brother. She closed the distance slower, arms wrapped around him and head dropped to his chest. He kissed her head.

“You need a hospital?” Mick asked him, one hand firm on Len’s hip.

“Vodka and tweezers.”

“You can’t stitch,” Mick reminded him at a mutter, because they both knew he’d be the one patching Len back together.

Len chuckled, tired and pained, and leaned against Mick a little heavier.

 

 

Two days later, they packed up Mick’s old car with the essentials, drove past the ice rink as a final goodbye, and left Central. They drove for hours, Len pushing his liver’s limits on painkillers for his leg, Lisa curled up between them, and Mick humming along to the radio.

“Where are we going?” Lisa asked when they made it past Oklahoma and into Texas.

“Boss?”

Len turned his gaze out the window and shrugged. For once, he didn’t have a plan.

(Mick ended up driving them all to Vegas just because he could.)


End file.
